r saw any good come to a gentleman from those accursed books,"
said the Nevile,--"fit only for monks and shavelings. But still, for
your father's sake, though I am ashamed of the poorness of the gift--"

"No; God be with you, sir, and reward you." She stopped short, drew
her wimple round her face, and was gone. Nevile felt an uncomfortable
sensation of remorse and disapproval at having suffered her to quit him
while there was yet any chance of molestation or annoyance, and his eye
followed her till a group of trees veiled her from his view.

The young maiden slackened her pace as she found herself alone under
the leafless boughs of the dreary pollards,--a desolate spot, made
melancholy by dull swamps, half overgrown with rank verdure, through
which forced its clogged way the shallow brook that now gives its name
(though its waves are seen no more) to one of the main streets in the
most polished quarters of the metropolis. Upon a mound formed by the
gnarled roots of the dwarfed and gnome-like oak, she sat down and wept.
In our earlier years, most of us may remember that there was one day
which made an epoch in life,--that day that separated Childhood from
Youth; for that day seems not to come gradually, but to be a sudden
crisis, an abrupt revelation. The buds of the heart open to close no
more. Such a day was this in that girl's fate. But the day was not yet
gone! That morning, when she dressed for her enterprise of filial love,
perhaps for the first time Sibyll Warner felt that she was fair--who
shall say whether some innocent, natural vanity had not blended with the
deep, devoted earnestness, which saw no shame in the act by which the
child could aid the father? Perhaps she might have smiled to listen to
old Madge's praises of her winsome face, old Madge's predictions that
the face and the gittern would not lack admirers on the gay ground;
perhaps some indistinct, vague forethoughts of the Future to which the
sex will deem itself to be born might have caused the cheek--no, not to
blush, but to take a rosier hue, and the pulse to beat quicker, she knew
not why. At all events, to that ground went the young Sibyll, cheerful,
and almost happy, in her inexperience of actual life, and sure, at
least, that youth and innocence sufficed to protect from insult. And now
she sat down under the leafless tree to weep; and in those bitter tears,
childhood itself was laved from her soul forever.

"What ailest thou, maiden?" asked a